I've got a shitty partner for an English project; I'm sure everyone here can relate. I doubt anyone couldn't, it's just a common trend with stupid teachers to make idiot pairings or groups. Seriously.

This English Project is an EOCP (End of Course Project), which is a fancy way of saying it counts for 20% of our final grade. I was quite pleased at first, as it meant that I could easily get 20 points while doing half the workload of a normal project. However, I got paired up with a person who hates me just as much as I hate her. On top of that she doesn't want anything to do with the project, however, when I try to suggest something she'll shoot it down and say something like: "That's stupid!" or "We're not doing that!".

*Heavy Sigh*

Let me start with what this project actually is and what has gone on exactly. First off, the project in on the book To Kill a Mockingbird, from which we were given a character in the novel and asked to make a Scrapbook for that character. We have to take items of significance to the character and put them in a book for a grade. Sounds simple right? When you have a character that appears for a page and a half or two, not so much.

With few things to actually use, I tried to draw upon every single little thing I could think of to go with him. Each idea I offered, my partner returned with something similar to the comments above. Each time she rejected something I asked her what she wanted to do for it, and her response was either: "I don't know." or "Shut up."; She kept that up until I asked her one final time before the bell rang when she said: "Oh I have a list of my ideas right here" and she shoved a paper in my face.

Half of the things were what I said.

Annoyed, but still able to put up with a little, I told her I'd bring in stuff the next day. I brought in a whole plethora of print outs, a unique book for us to put it all in, and a checklist. She took a look at everything, disregarded my print outs (taking out her own, saying they were better and that we'd use them) and said we weren't using the book I brought. I said: "Fine. Are you going to make the book then?"; Her response was: "Yeah. Sure. Whatever."

I reminded her several times before the period was over to make sure she brought the book the next day so I could put everything together over the weekend (Like she asked). Well, that day was Friday and I woke up feeling like shit. I seriously felt like I was going to pass out all day, and almost did on the way to fourth period. I decided I'd get the book and go to the nurse and probably just end up going home early. I get to fourth period and ask her for the book, her response was: "YOU never gave me yours, so I couldn't fix it!"

I swear the vein in my head popped.

"YOU told me you were going to make your own for us to use!" was my response after I calmed down. She just rolled her eyes went: "Pfft." and walked off to go talk with her friends. After that, I had had enough. I got all of our materials and went to the nurse, I ended up going home an hour early. I also ended up doing the entire project by myself at home, and made it look amazing.

I woke up this morning feeling like complete shit. Sicker than I was on Friday or over the weekend. But, it is exam week, so I had to just suck it up and go to school; I brought the project to give to my teacher just in case I went home early again. I didn't end up going home early, I went to my English class as per usual, and grab the project.

The teacher told us we'd have to present four pages of our scrap book for 1/2 of our grade on it. She said if someone did most of the writing than the other person should present it. Looking at her, she immediately told me she didn't want to present it, and that I would. I retorted: "I wrote up the entire thing; You're presenting it." She was about to bite my head off when the teacher added that the final grade for the project wouldn't be shared. It would be based off of the amount of work that the partner did alone, and it would be based on a partner evaluation. I pursed my lips to keep from smiling; She glared.

After that was announced, she got really pissed and walked away from me, going to talk with her friends and their groups rather than be by me like she was supposed to. I stayed in my seat, and simply waited for her to return, my lips pursed in a thin line the entire time. All the while, I could hear her complaining to her friends about how she was going to flunk this because "I didn't LET HER do anything!" I talked to the teacher several times during the period, the teacher tried to get my partner to join me, but she refused. Several students asked me for my point of view, if I did all of the work, or if I really didn't let her do anything.

I simply said: "I might as well have been alone. She printed off pictures and told me what to do. She may have written one line. All that she contributed I could have done myself in five or ten minutes, maybe even less."

I said this rather quietly, but apparently, one of them told my partner. If looks could kill, the one she gave me would have. Under her breath she started to rant to her friends, looking at me every so often: "What a fucking loser! He didn't let me do anything! I'm going to get a fucking zero on this because he's fucking racist! He's going to give me a bad review cause 'I didn't do anything'; Bitch doesn't know what he's talking about. I printed out everything, wrote up that poem thingy, and thought up all of the objects! But I'm going to get a bad grade because of his whiny, ungrateful, racist ass! I'm so going to fucking punch him in the fucking face!" She looked over at me, to notice I was telling someone else what was going on. She stood, to get closer to where I was, and practically hissed: "You fucking loser. You better watch your fucking back, cause when I'm through with you, you WILL be sorry. I will get all the credit on this assignment, and I'll see to it that you get the fucking zero you deserve. Dick."

I disregarded everything and waited until the bell rang. After class I repeated everything for the teacher. She said that she would handle my partner and I would present alone. I was about to just take that when she stopped me from leaving and started to ramble about how there are people in life that don't get along. I just wanted to go home, but she dragged on forever until she finally she finished with this: "The reason I paired you two up is so you'd learn a life lesson. Someday when you have a job you'll be working with people, and they sometimes won't want to pull their weight. You're going to have to learn how to deal with them."

I pursed my lips once more, thanked her, and left.

I can understand the whole concept and reason why she did it. But where does she get the right to say that she's going to teach me that lesson? How is she justified to make the decision that I need to learn that on a project this important? And more so, where does she get the right to make that decision? She's a teacher who I've known for little more than 9 weeks, a little over two months. That decision was not justified and it was not right.

The following statement is true for everyone in all of the classes I've ever had, this was just an extreme example I ended up in:

How is it that all of the smart people end up getting dumped off on the stupid or unwilling people when the project would be so much better if they were together? Seriously. Why not let the stupid people work together and make a project they deserve? Why not lump the unwilling people together and they either work together because they have to or take the zero? Why force the people that actually work to do it all?

The similarities between college and real life is your left ear to your right big toe.

In high school, it's okay to fuck shit up and get terrible grades, because only college cares about that shit. And after you get in college, you have a clean slate.

That teacher of yours may not have been justified in pairing you up with such an obvious racist/bitch/whore (I'm assuming that you two were different colors, considering your story), but it is something that you will need to learn how to deal with. I've complained several times to my friends about how much of an ass my roommate is. But do I do anything about it? No, I don't really see the need to, seeing as I'm not playing Roommate Roulette next year. I tell them 'don't worry bros, I got this' pretty much every day.

But situations like this one are going to come up eventually. They aren't very prevalent in college, but they definitely happen. I had to deal with it once in my freshman year, where I was the one doing all the work (although it was because I was terrified of the jocks and didn't want to have anything to do with them). I had to deal with it again where a member of my group of five, including myself, didn't do shit. We talked to the professor as a group and just plain dropped his ass off our group. He may have even dropped the class.

But enough about my experiences. I'll just say this: Smart people will always bear the burdens of the...not smart. That's just a fact of life. All the geniuses of our age have to bear our 'stupid people' burdens. Why do you think Stephen Hawking is such a fucking asshole? Because if humans were part of the atmosphere, an average human would be in the stratosphere, and he would be in the ionosphere. That's a huge fucking difference.